| A fellow colleague sent me the following article
and asked for my response on it. This is just what I like. To be
able to argue a valid market question from both perspectives. So,
here goes... Read my response below.
MarketingSherpa: Marketers Say Search Is Not 'Very Effective'
by Ross Fadner
Staff Writer
Monday, August 09, 2004
Source: Media
Post
MarketingSherpa's 2004 Search Marketing Survey finds that on average,
neither marketers or their agencies feel their search marketing
efforts are "very effective."
------- begin article -------------------
According to MarketingSherpa's 2004 Search Marketing Survey, on
average, neither marketers or their agencies feel their search marketing
efforts are "very effective." However, as MarketingSherpa
Publisher and Editor Anne Holland says, it's their own fault.
When you combine paid search spending with search optimization
spending, the total spend on search reaches $3.78 billion, according
to the survey--a considerable number for "an ad tactic"
most marketers believe to be only "somewhat effective."
Fifty percent of the survey's 3,007 marketers said paid inclusion
and optimization are "somewhat effective," while 47 percent
believe the same is true of paid ads. About a third of respondents
said optimization and paid ads are "very effective," but
only 18 percent said the same is true of paid inclusion.
Why aren't marketers more pleased with their search marketing campaigns?
Holland says it's a question of perception versus reality. Marketers
are notoriously hard to please, and within a complicated environment
like search, the truth can often be clouded over. For Holland, a
couple of glaring trends/problems stood out.
For one, most marketers don't send their click-throughs to specialized
landing pages. Holland said this means they're losing out on a lot
of conversions. Results from a 2003 MarketingSherpa survey of Google
AdWords customers pointed out that 75 percent of those using specialized
landing pages reported significantly higher conversion rates than
those who sent traffic to a regular site page. Sixty-three percent
of that survey's respondents said they sent click-throughs to specialized
landing pages.
In the 2004 survey, that figure fell drastically, although the
2004 survey included all search campaigns. Just 42 percent of those
surveyed currently use specialized landing pages, 32 percent use
deep-linking, and 26 percent send their traffic to the home page.
Still, "people should know better," Holland said despondently.
"The majority are sending people to crappy pages." She
noted that such "worst-practices" leave "a lot of
money on the table," because marketers are sending click-throughs
to pages that don't convert well.
Rob Middleton, chief strategy officer of search engine marketing
(SEM) services firm Fathom Online, noted that the decrease is partly
due to the involvement of fledgling newbie advertisers in paid search
over the last year. Middleton said that many new advertisers start
by taking the self-service approach, and then find themselves disappointed
in the results. He noted that effective search marketers aren't
buying 10 or 20 keywords--they're buying 5,000 keywords and monitoring
their progress constantly.
"Often, we need to tell clients why they should be tracking,"
Middleton said. The MarketingSherpa report also revealed that search
optimization boosts traffic considerably, despite search marketers'
lukewarm response to it. According to the data, marketers said organic
clicks increased an average of 73 percent in the six months after
optimization; organic click-throughs convert 6.7 percent for business-to-business
marketers and 6.5 percent for business-to-consumer marketers.
Despite this, marketers will only spend $238.5 million on search
engine optimization (SEO) services, while paid search spending will
be $3.3 billion. "Optimization is very mysterious," said
MarketingSherpa's Holland. She said that companies are overly wary
about SEO because they know so little about it.
Overall, Holland said that hiring outside help improves search
performance. SEM agencies get significantly higher average click
rates (3.4 percent versus 2.8 percent), and higher conversion rates
for paid search (6.1 percent versus 5.8 percent)--and they also
bid nine cents higher on average than most in-house SEM operations,
which results in more leads.
So which are the best SEM firms? Holland wouldn't say, but she
did note that any firm with a high staff-to-client ratio will do
the best job. Holland said a good agency is largely determined by
the number of man hours it can devote per page, per site. By man
hours, she means technicians, not salespeople. According to Holland,
there is a lot of room for growth in the SEM/SEO space.
MarketingSherpa's 2004 Search Marketing Survey is part of the Search
Marketing Metrics Guide, which was released last week.
------- end article -------------------
My response to this article:
Well the article does explain the dilemma well. Most companies
don't give considerable thought to the "action" or "type
of action" they want evoked at a landing page.
An action is something you would like to see done such as signing
up for a newsletter, printing out a coupon. or calling a company
directly. It is definable and clear within itself. For example,
I would like to see a 10% rise in my newsletter readership base
this month. When someone sees my website, they should sign up to
read my newsletter.
The next step here is to think about how to make that happen from
your user's standpoint. What will cause him to act upon that action?
The fact of the matter is, many companies just send their user
or viewer to their website homepage. They don't use a landing page
to address a specific problem or topic.
So, for example, I've read a great email that I've perceived to
have found a solution to my question or to a problem, I click on
the link, and then I go to some generic page.
Honestly, this is not going to provide a high motivation for me
to look around or "figure out" their system. I simply
don't have the time!
The second major point, is SEO is a big mystery and you really
have to be as perservering as people such as Andreas
is to keep up with it, follow it and be a leader in the industry.
97% of clients or potential clients don't understand the value
or its importance as an integral part to their marketing campaign,
either off-line or online.
The third factor influencing this is the smaller companies that
get into SEO without a full understanding of it or who gets into
it to strickly take monetary advantage of it with unsuspecting or
naive clients. In other words, there are many unsuspecting businesses
that get ripped off and tricked. They are often paying high fees
each month for very little service or overall results.
So, in a nutshell this article does touch on the major points but
it doesn't give a strong argument or basis that SEO and search marketing
is not important.
They admit in the article that search engine marketing is worthwhile
and give the various trouble-spots with it.
To summarize, like we've been saying this is not something you
can do half-way.
Doing it half-way results in a loss of your total investment into
the search strategy.
You have to apply the following to make it work:
- Perform a thorough keyword analysis outside of your website
and its content.
- Build strong landing pages that answer a specific user or discuss
a specific topic. Landing pages have to tailored to specifc keywords
and keyword phrases that will be typed into search engines.
- Use conversion and tracking code to track your results.
- Provide a strong call to action (do the job, solve the problem
right there) to increase your conversion rate.
- Set up and establish a clear metric system for gauging search marketing results and improving upon those results
- Set up a monitoring and adjustment system for adjusting your
ads and search marketing keywords
- Follow up on converted leads and talk with them about their
problem or question at hand. This can be done through newsletters,
promotions, and value-added information to name a few.
Page created October 22, 2004
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